SDSU at USD

All-time series: SDSU leads 25-17 and has won five straight, including last season’s 77-49 decision at Viejas Arena and 69-62 in overtime at the JCP in 2009.

Tickets: A limited number remain at $25 and $30. They are available at the JCP box office from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., online, or by calling (619) 260-7550.

San Diego State led Cal by eight points early in the second half, and Cal led UC Irvine by 27 earlier this season, and UC Irvine led USD by 38 last Saturday.

So, using that logic and math, sometime in the second half tonight at the Jenny Craig Pavilion, SDSU should be leading USD by 73.

It doesn’t work that way in real life, of course. Or in real rivalries.

These things have a way of tightening up no matter how lopsided they might appear, no matter how much the rosters and records and results tell you they won’t. Emotions tug, opportunity knocks, favorites press, underdogs elevate.

“Sometimes you play the best game you’ve ever played when you play your crosstown rival,” Aztecs coach Steve Fisher said. “And other times, if you’re supposed to win, you might get a little tentative if you don’t play well out of the gate.

“We’ve always, especially when we’ve gone there, had exciting, close games. I would anticipate, regardless of what anybody else might say, more of the same.”

Two years ago at the Jenny Craig Pavilion, the Aztecs had essentially the same team that would go 34-3 and reach the Sweet 16 last March, and they won in overtime after USD’s Clinton Houston missed an open layup late in regulation. In 2007, SDSU won by five points. In 2005, a 10-point loss. In 2003, a three-point win. In 2001, a five-point loss.

The 43rd edition of the city basketball championship seems more lopsided than ever – a team coming off a dramatic home win over No. 24 Cal facing a team that was trailing previously winless UC Irvine by 38 – and it is exactly that dynamic that has Fisher grabbing a stack of USD DVDs from his video coordinator before leaving practice Monday afternoon and settling in for a long night of pressing rewind.

SDSU went 34-3 last season while USD was going 6-24. SDSU finished No. 3 in the RPI, the computerized formula that rates all 340-odd Division I teams; USD was 318th.

In March, the Aztecs went to the Sweet 16 and nearly knocked off eventual champion Connecticut.

In April, USD was holding a news conference to discuss a federal indictment alleging the school’s all-time leading scorer had fixed basketball games.

“It’s human emotion,” Fisher said. “When you hear so much about somebody else, and you know you’re good and you know you can play, you probably get tired of hearing it … They’ve had everything but good fortune go their way the last couple years. But you compete. You fight. You stay together.”